Oct 6, 1780. London. Henry Laurens, the former president of the Continental Congress, is marched into the Tower of London on suspicion of high treason. He's the only American ever held prisoner there. Laurens was one of the richest men in South Carolina, a merchant and planter from Charleston. He'd served as president of Congress in 1777 and 1778, right through the Valley Forge winter. His son, John Laurens, was one of Washington's aides and Alexander Hamilton's closest friend. In 1780 Congress sent him to the Netherlands to try to get a loan and a treaty with the Dutch. In early September, off Newfoundland, a British warship caught his ship. Laurens saw it coming and threw his secret papers overboard in a weighted bag. It didn't sink fast enough. British sailors fished it out of the water. Inside was a draft of a possible treaty between the Americans and Amsterdam. That bag of soggy papers helped push Britain to declare war on the Netherlands that December. Laurens had accidentally helped start a new war. He was taken to London and locked in the Tower, the same fortress where English kings had imprisoned traitors for centuries. He was in his mid-50s and suffering badly from gout. He was kept under close guard, and for long stretches he wasn't allowed visitors, newspapers, or even pen and paper. He had to pay the cost of his own imprisonment, including the warders' fees. The British kept pressuring him to give up the cause. He refused. He sat in the Tower for more than a year. Then the war turned. In late 1781 he was let out on bail, and he was finally exchanged for a prisoner the Americans had just captured: Lord Charles Cornwallis. Laurens went straight back to work. He joined Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay in Paris and signed the preliminary peace treaty with Britain in November 1782. But he never got to share the win with his son. John Laurens was killed in a minor skirmish in South Carolina in August 1782, one of the last American officers to die in the war. When Henry Laurens died in 1792, he left orders to have his body cremated, something almost unheard of in America at the time. He was reportedly terrified of being buried alive.
— Echoes of War (@EchoesofWarYT) October 6, 2026
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